


The Life I Needed All Along

by graytheglowinggay



Series: X-Men: My Self-Indulgent Gay Nonsense [16]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Age of X-Man (Marvel Comics), Alcohol, Awkward Crush, Background Relationships, Canon Related, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Relationships, Crushes, Dialogue Heavy, Drunken Kissing, Drunken Shenanigans, During Canon, Experimental Style, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor Jean Grey/Scott Summers, Not Beta Read, Past Character Death, Resurrection, Scott Summers Deserves Happiness, Stream of Consciousness, Uncanny X-Men Vol. 5 (2018), no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graytheglowinggay/pseuds/graytheglowinggay
Summary: "I've dated two psychics. My father is an emotionally distant space pirate. My time-traveling son from the future is older than me. My younger self hates me. And yet still... somehow... you were the most complicated relationship in my life."-Scott Summers, "Death of Wolverine: Life After Logan (2014)"After Logan comes back from the dead, Scott examines his relationship with his teammate.
Relationships: Logan (X-Men)/Scott Summers
Series: X-Men: My Self-Indulgent Gay Nonsense [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693336
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42





	The Life I Needed All Along

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to Scott Summers. Love that twink.
> 
> Also, the epitaph is from "Uncanny X-Men (2018) #11", which is the issue in which they reunited. Yeah, they just said that to each other. And I wrote this whole damn thing because of it.

_ “Logan.” _

_ “Slim.” _

_ “Now that we’re all caught up, let’s go. We’ve got work to do.” _

* * *

Scott Summers was used to the impossible. It was something he needed some degree of tolerance for as the leader of the X-Men, lest he ends up mad. If he had a dollar for every time Jean Grey went missing, was presumed dead, or straight-up died, he’d have— well, he wouldn’t have a lot of dollars, but he’d have more than one. But with Logan it was different. Logan didn’t get hurt as other people did. He’d been shot, stabbed, beheaded, and blown up more times than Scott could count, but none of those injuries had mattered for more than a few hours. The man’s healing factor took care of it. And then his healing factor stopped taking care of it. Logan had died, Scott was sure of it. He went to the funeral, he saw his body. It looked so much smaller without the larger-than-life personality that had inhabited it.

Scott carried on because it was what he always had to do. He couldn’t stop to grieve; he didn’t have that luxury. He lost it when Charles first chose him as the leader of the X-Men. A leader can’t mourn, not for long. He has to set an example for his troops, be the stronger one. At least he had the other X-Men, who were also grieving Logan’s loss.

And then they disappeared too, and Scott was alone.

Losing his wife, losing his family, that was the salt in the wound. X-Men were lost, of course, they were always lost, but now they were all gone, save for a few stragglers scattered around the globe. Scott was in free-fall, and only God knew how far he’d drop.

And then Logan was back, back again like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t suffocated in a cocoon of molten metal. Scott had gotten used to that fact, the fact that the Wolverine was dead, and now he wasn’t. Always one to throw himself back into the action, Logan quickly took up Scott’s quest to figure out what had happened to the X-Men. Unlike the rest of the world, neither Logan nor Scott thought that the X-Men were really dead. Things like this had happened before, someone ended up back in time or in the future or in another reality or a pocket dimension; “some quantum brainiac bullshit”, as Logan succinctly put it.

However, as they traveled, Logan tended to be a man of few words, and so Scott was left to his thoughts, more often than not. He thought about what Logan meant to him. Usually, it was simplest to think of the other mutant as a rival, and that wasn’t entirely wrong. They fought over leadership, over plans, over the woman that both of them loved. Though, when it came down to it, both of them would trust the other with his life in a heartbeat, if it came down to it. When they were both on the same side, they fought like they shared the same mind, which sometimes, due to telepathy, they did.

But now, Scott found that “rival” didn’t cut it anymore. They were friends, maybe. When their relationship was at its best, they would spend evenings and weekends together, splitting a six-pack (or two, or three) and chatting until they were both too drunk to string a sentence together. Though, his memories of those nights, however fuzzy they were, didn’t always just feel like the times of friends. Usually, they drank outside, which was fine with Scott, as it gave them privacy. Sometimes, though, it got cold. Not too cold for Logan, of course, who could probably go out in a blizzard in boxer shorts, but certainly too cold for Scott. Who would move closer to press himself against Logan— the man was practically a space heater because of all that hair. And if he ever did the same when he wasn’t actually cold— well, who’s to say?

Sometimes, Scott thought about Logan naked. Not in any weird way, though. Who didn’t think about their friends/romantic rivals naked from time to time? And given the frequency with which Logan was injured and his uniform destroyed, he had plenty of material to work with. It was funny, really; given the number of times the two of them had gone on missions together, he had probably seen Logan naked or nearly-naked more often than Jean ever had. And she was the one with the crush. Right?  _ Right? _

Scott had nothing against gay people. Really. Some of his favorite teammates were gay. But Bobby was the gay member of the Original X-Men, not Scott. Scott was not gay. He just wasn’t. He had his type, and that type was women. Women like Jean… and Madelyne… and Emma. Maybe he just had a thing for telepaths. Regardless, Logan wasn’t a woman, and he wasn’t a telepath. But maybe Logan was attractive— if, of course, hypothetically, he was attractive— it was different than Jean. If Jean was an expertly mixed Manhattan, Logan was whisky on the rocks. Both delicious, just… different. Not that Logan was delicious. He’d never tasted him. Logan wouldn’t just taste like whisky, though. He’d taste like he smelled: like whisky and metal and pomade and that  _ fucking cologne _ that smelled like a middle-school locker room in the middle of a pine forest.

And even if Scott had kissed Logan— which he hadn’t— what was a little drunken kiss between rivals/teammates? It didn’t matter, because Scott didn’t remember it, and Logan wouldn’t have remembered it. They each drank a whole six-pack… which was barely enough to get Logan tipsy. He must have remembered the whole thing.  _ Fuck _ .

* * *

“So, Logan.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got something I think I need to say.”

“Well, just say it then.”

“I think…”

“That’s a shock.”

“Watch it, runt.”

“Apologies, Slim. Do continue.”

“I think… I have a crush on you.”

“Well duh.”

“What do you mean, ‘well duh’?”

“I mean, you didn’t do a good job of hiding it.”

“How did I not do a good job of hiding it?”

“Well, first of all, your scent changes. You sweat slightly more. Your breathing shifts. Your pupils dilate slightly.”

“But how does that mean I have a crush on you.”

“It’s the same way you get when you’re around Jeannie.”

“Fuck.”

“Your body doesn’t lie, Slim.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Whatdya mean, what does it mean? It means you’ve got feelings for yours truly.”

“I mean what does it mean for us.”

“Well, what do you want it to mean? Sorry to break it to you, but you’re not the first guy who’s expressed an interest in me.”

“I just— I have no clue what to do.”

“Starts out a lot like you’d do with a girl, you kiss ‘em. Not much different there except for the beard.”

“I’ve never kissed a man before. Well, not sober.”

“I know. I remember. Now, you should get that kiss out of the way before your ears burn off.”

Kissing Logan was different than kissing Jean. Scott didn’t know why he had expected them to feel the same, but she was his best frame of reference (other than Emma, who he didn’t think would be very similar to Logan at all). Besides the facial hair, which gave the kiss a different… texture to be sure, Logan just felt different as a person to kiss. He was rough, grizzled, yet tender in a way that Scott knew had been trained over a century.

“How was it, Slim?”

“It was… nice.”

“Nice? That’s all I get, huh?”

“I don’t even know how to categorize it. I don’t have a lot of experience kissing hairy Canadian men.”

“Not yet you don’t.”

“So you’re saying this isn’t a one-time thing?”

“Scott, I know a hopeless romantic when I see one. And you’re the most hopeless romantic that I know.”

“I just wanna say, before you get any ideas… I’m not ready for sex. Not yet, at least.”

“We don’t need to do anything like that. Not now, not ever, if that’s what you need.”

“I would like one more thing, though.”

“And what is that?”

“Hold me.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this fic. I wrote it in one sitting in my friend's dorm room while she did homework. Yeah, I'm at college now. I also wrote my previous fic from college, but this is the first time I've mentioned it in the endnotes. So, until now, y'all didn't know. My life exists only in these notes that you read.


End file.
